Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
If you genuinely cannot remember what you said, that is often true rather than a dodge. Under a big surge of stress the part of the brain that writes the story goes quiet, while the part that records the feeling gets louder.
So you end up with no account of the row and a strong charge attached to the kitchen, the tone of voice, the hour of the night. Arguing over who said what is usually a dead end. Saying I do not remember it, tell me what it was like, is not an evasion as long as you follow it with putting things right.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Moses' mother felt a void in her heart (Quran 28:10). A mind under real fear does not work the way it usually does, and that is described without blame.
وَأَصۡبَحَ فُؤَادُ أُمِّ مُوسَىٰ فَٰرِغًاۖ إِن كَادَتۡ لَتُبۡدِي بِهِۦ لَوۡلَآ أَن رَّبَطۡنَا عَلَىٰ قَلۡبِهَا لِتَكُونَ مِنَ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ
The next day, Moses’ mother felt a void in her heart––if We had not strengthened it to make her one of those who believe, she would have revealed everything about him––
Qur’an 28:10read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A theoretical review of post-traumatic distress proposed that fear is not the whole story, and that numbing and dissociation form a separate pathway with a different brain pattern behind it. Blankness and gaps are treated in that literature as recognised parts of the picture rather than as signs of lying. It is a model built from other findings, so it is a way of organising the evidence rather than a result in itself.
Lanius RA, Frewen PA, Vermetten E, Yehuda R. (2010). Fear conditioning and early life vulnerabilities: two distinct pathways of emotional dysregulation and brain dysfunction in PTSD.. European journal of psychotraumatology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Under heavy stress the system that keeps the narrative and the one that keeps the alarm do not record at the same strength.
When not to
This explains the gap, it does not settle what you owe, so ask the person who was there and take responsibility for the effect either way.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The gap between your car and the one in front belongs to nobody at all, and still, somebody moving into it lands like a break-in.
When someone comes at you angry, listen for the fear in it. It changes what you say next, and it changes what their anger does to you.
Traditions that agree on very little agree on this. Contemplatives, evolutionary biologists and therapists all arrived separately at the same order of events: something feels threatened, then hostility arrives.